Chapter One

Hello! I've just finished reading chapter one. It's rather short, only 5 1/2 pages, but I feel like there are already a lot of questions to answer, and only a little bit revealed about the story line. Of course, I have already read the book, so I know a lot of the answers to these questions I will pose already. However, the point of this blog (I will reiterate, just in case) is to get some different perspectives on the information and story provided from chapter to chapter.
Now, in chapter one, we get a bit of a feel for the conditions in which Jane lives in. She lives with her horrid aunt and three nasty cousins: Mrs. Reed, and John, Eliza, and Georgiana Reed. They treat her the way that Cinderella was treated by her step family. Very little is revealed about Jane's history or personality, but the Reed family is described a bit more in depth.
From this point on, I will pose the questions and put down the thoughts I had from the beginning of the chapter to the end.
The very first thing mentioned is the poor weather and the fact that Jane is pleased that they do not go for a long walk that day. It is November, freezing, and very dreary. I suppose that if I were in this type of weather (persistent rain and bitter winds) I would be as unhappy as Jane seems.

• Is Jane really depressed at this point?
• Why does Jane claim she is physically inferior to her cousins?

The very next thing I noticed, and deemed important, was the way Mrs. Reed talks down to Jane.
Quote: "Me, she had dispensed from joining the group, saying, "She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation that I was endeavoring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner--something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were--she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy little children." " End quote.¹

• Why does Mrs. Reed believe Jane is not sociable, childlike, happy, etc?
• Why is the solution to this problem keeping Jane away from other people?
• Surely that cannot help to make her more sociable if she really is antisocial?

Next, I'm very sure that there is a symbol presented in the book Jane chooses to read. However, I actually am unsure what it means and why it is there. There is a passage quoted from the book that she is reading:

Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,

Boils round the naked, melancholy isles

Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge

Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.²

I can't help but wonder if Jane is reading a book about birds because she longs to (and this sounds cheesy) "fly" away from her troubled life with the Reed family.

• What exactly is the symbol represented here, if any, and what does it mean?
• Why does Jane choose to read about birds, of all things?

Now we see that Jane is looking out the window at "pictures", I guess...there is a graveyard near the house she lives in (I think) so I wonder if the pictures she describes are on the headstones or not.

• What are the pictures Jane is looking at, and where are they?

Jane mentions that the pictures she is looking at are almost as interesting as the stories Bessie sometimes tells when she is doing the laundry, stories she later learns are from books: Pamela and Henry, Earl of Moreland.

• What is the significance of the fact that she learns the stories she's heard from Bessie are from these books?

Next we get a taste of what John is like, and he is a horrible, nasty thing. The first words we hear from his mouth are, "Boh, Madame Mope!" A name he has come up with to call Jane. I frown upon this. Next we learn that John is so stupid (or mean) that he cannot even get Jane's name right. He calls her Joan. Then Jane describes him as "not quick either of vision or conception." I always laugh at that part. At this point, Jane describes herself as being awkward.

• Why does she describe herself as awkward?

Jane mentions the fact that John is 14 and that she is 10. I can't help but wonder why we jump into the story on this particular day, and why there is no history given (as of yet) of what happened in Jane's life up till this day.

• Why do YOU think that this particular piece of information is left out in the beginning of the book?

Next is one of my most favorite parts of this chapter. She mentions the fact that John is large and stout, and that he "gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious."³ (Bilious, by the way, means ill-tempered.) Whenever I read this part, it nearly always reminds me of Dudley Dursley.

• What does John remind you of?

Once Jane mentions John's largeness, she begins describing his character: that he felt little to no love for his family, and that he particularly hated and tormented Jane. Jane says that "every nerve I had feared him,"⁴ and that when he would hit her or tease her, Mrs. Reed was "blind and deaf," even if it happened right in front of her, which it often did.

• Besides Mrs. Reed's nearly obsessive "love" for John, why would she ignore the fact that Jane is constantly bullied and beat up?

Jane states that she was very accustomed to John's abuse, and that because of her fear of him, she was "habitually obedient." Jane was so afraid of John that she nearly always failed to stand up for herself.
On this particular day, when John comes in to torment Jane some more, he states that "she ought to beg" for everything that she had, and that she shouldn't be allowed to live within the means that he did. John Reed was wicked and abusive. When his words are finally too much, and after he throws a book at Jane and splits her head open, Jane finally retaliates, only to find that Eliza and Georgiana had fetched their mother. Mrs. Reed, again blind and deaf to Jane's needs, immediately punishes Jane for being in such a "fury to fly at John."⁵ Jane has now been sent to the red-room, of which we know nothing at this point.

• How is it that, seeing how extensive Jane's injuries are, and how little John has been hurt, Mrs. Reed and the servants can be so cruel to Jane, and instantly accuse her of being the one that started the fight?

Okay, that's my analysis of chapter one! Please comment, and tune in for chapter two!



Footnotes:
1. Jane Eyre, Chapter One, page one; middle of third paragraph.
2. Jane Eyre, Chapter One, page two; middle of second paragraph.
3. Jane Eyre, Chapter One, page four; middle of second paragraph.
4. Jane Eyre, Chapter One, page four; middle of third paragraph.
5. Jane Eyre, Chapter One, page six; top of last paragraph.